BC QuickBooks Sales Tax Codes: GST/PST BC, GST BC, Z, E (Free)

British Columbia is the province where QuickBooks’ code list stops being trivia and starts being the bookkeeping itself. Three taxable combinations ship with every BC file, and choosing between the first two, both taxes or GST alone, moves 7% of each purchase between recoverable credit and permanent cost. This reference explains each code, the recovery logic underneath, and the routine that keeps a BC file filing-ready, with the CSV version attached for the wall.

The six codes and their money meaning

• GST/PST BC (12%): the goods code, also covering software, telecom, repairs, and legal services. Purchase side: 5% returns, 7% stays in the cost. Sales side: you collect both, owing each to its government.
• GST BC (5%): the services code, plus resale inventory and PST-exempt goods. Fully creditable on purchases.
• PST BC (7%): standalone provincial tax, chiefly for self-assessment on goods brought into the province.
• Z (0%): zero-rated, groceries and exports; credits survive.
• E: exempt, bank fees, insurance, residential rent; no credits on related costs.
• Out of scope: wages, permits, donations, transfers; outside the system entirely.

The distinctions that pay for themselves

Resale inventory is the province’s best exemption. Give suppliers your PST number and goods for resale arrive PST-free, coded GST BC. A store or wholesaler coding inventory at 12% is donating 7% of its cost of goods to nobody; the fix is upstream, in purchasing, not in the books.

Food never carries PST, even prepared: the business lunch is 5% GST (half of it claimable under the federal meals rule) plus 10% PST only on the liquor. Software and telecom do carry PST, which surprises every ledger that migrates from Alberta. Legal services carry PST; accounting does not, a professional-fees split unique enough to deserve its own line on the coding sheet.

Two taxes, two returns, one file

Collected GST accumulates for the CRA; collected PST accumulates for Victoria, on a separate return with its own schedule. QuickBooks tracks each liability once the codes are in play, and the month-end discipline is reconciling both: the GST control against the federal filing, the PST liability against the provincial one. Files that treat PST as a GST footnote find the provincial return unreconcilable within a quarter.

Self-assessment, the code nobody volunteers to use

PST BC earns its place the day goods arrive from outside the province for business use: the office chairs ordered from an Ontario supplier, the equipment brought over from the Calgary branch. No BC vendor charged the 7%, but the liability exists, and self-assessing it through the standalone code is dramatically cheaper than explaining its absence later. Resale inventory stays out of this entirely, exempt either way, which confines the routine to the goods the business keeps and uses. A quarterly look at out-of-province goods purchases is the whole discipline.

Working the list

1. Enable sales tax; the BC set provisions itself, no custom builds.
2. Let the BC chart of accounts for QuickBooks carry the defaults; use this list for the exceptions.
3. On any no-tax line, choose Z, E, or Out of scope deliberately; they report differently.
4. Sweep 12%-coded lines in service accounts and 5%-coded lines in goods accounts monthly; those two miscodes are BC’s signature errors.
5. When selling into other provinces, enable their codes from the built-in list; the buyer’s province governs.

The choosing happens at document speed, dozens of times a day. Dext pins recurring vendors to rules. ExpenseFlow reads each bill and receipt, makes the goods-versus-services call per line, keeps resale-exempt inventory at 5%, and posts coded entries into QuickBooks with both liabilities feeding their proper returns. Hubdoc archives the paper trail behind every number.

Xero handles the same province with one seeded pair and five custom rates; that story is the BC Xero tax rates reference.